Georgie on the Big Screen

Wow, this is happening a lot sooner than I thought but the first George W. Bush biopic will be released (in the States, nothing about New Zealand) on October 17 this year. It will be directed by Oliver Stone and is called simply W.

Josh Brolin, of No Country For Old Men fame will play the current president. It should be interesting, though I dislike Oliver Stone - a project like this is too tempting to not watch. Especially for Anti-Bushers.

The Optimal Obama Supporter...

...would be a black male under 30 with a college degree.

Well, that's the conclusion I grab from this cool like widget from the NY Times that looks at how the different groups voted... It shows some very clear obvious trends.

Like,

• Men like Obama - Women like Clinton.
• Blacks like Obama - Whites like Clinton.
• The young like Obama - The old like Clinton.
• Graduates like Obama - Non-Graduates like Clinton.

The income is less clear, it's moving slightly in the expected direction (rich like Obama - poor like Clinton) but it's not as clear cut. The poor seem quite divided, the West Virginia poor like Clinton by 65% and the Maryland poor like Obama by 41%. As you move up to the income scales the results become a little more centralised.
(h/t: David Farrar)

Linky. Well. One Link.

Awesome post on Brain Stab.

Clean Day.

One exam down!

Yesterday saw me finish off my first exam - Economics of Health and Education - and I now have a nice week and a half before my next three - which occur in two days, otherwise known as hell.

So today is Clean Day, my room needed a good clean and it now smells like vacuum cleaner and spray and wipe. My axolotl, Napoleon also needed a clean so I spent an hour doing that. He's now completely stressed out as he hates anyone interfering with his kingdom.

It was also cool how Barack Obama secured the nomination last night. About time - now we got to get onto the election - what an epic one that shall be.

Finally, Arrested Development quote of the moment from the third season. By my favourite character Tobias: Okay, Lindsay, are you forgetting that I was a professional twice over— an analyst and a therapist. The world's first analrapist.

This could be quite dull

Mr English raised the issue in Parliament today, and said if Mr Benson-Pope urged people to vote for Labour it would amount to election advertising under the Electoral Finance Act.

From the ODT.

You know. I really hope that this election isn't all about violations of the Electoral Finance Act. I can't think of a more boring way to conduct an election.

Who even cares?

Why must the likes of TV3 rabbit on about the "golden rules" of politics? Apparently Phil Goff has broken them by acknowledging that Labour are behind in the polls and that they might lose the election and by discussing leadership after Helen Clark steps down.

What are these golden rules? They're just a buzz-phrase that reporters/journalists throw out that have no real significance in, well, anything. Phil Goff does something different, like stating the obvious and suddenly he's broken the golden rules. He might as well have raped a table. The media are just trying to make a mountain out of a molehill (to use an often-used phrase).

It's a pity that we live in an environment where the media are looking to grab onto anything to make a story out of. It would be so much nicer to live in a world where things were less sensationalised and rather have more intelligent discussion going on. I guess this just doesn't add up to big dollars for the media though. Pity.

One can hope?

National leader John Key wants to have a referendum on MMP. While he didn't say whether it will be simply MMP vs FPP or with STV thrown in it is still scary. While I don't actually object to there being a referendum on the subject (it seems like a reasonable one to me) and while I don't think that FPP will be voted back in. A referendum on the subject sends chills down the part of my spine that is interested in electoral systems. The prospect of returning to FPP seems awful. MMP may have its oddities but FPP is a system that delivers results like:

• The 1978 General Election. Labour gets 40.4% of the vote compared to National's 39.8% but National wins anyway by 11 seats. The Social Credit party manages to get 16.1% but only one seat to show for it.
• The 1981 General Election. Again, Labour beats National in the popular vote but still loses to National by 4 seats. The Social Credit gets even more of the vote - 20.65% any only manages to increase their seats by one.

So, we have a system that allows a party that gets less votes than another to win? Some may accuse of MMP of allowing this to happen (i.e. in a situation say in 1996, where NZ First could have signed up with Labour/Alliance combination) - the fact remains that those parties in power would have still represented the majority of the population.

I could spend a while discussing the negatives of a FPP system. Idiot/Savant has a large number of posts about MMP here that can be read. The main problems I have with MMP is the 5% threshold (which should be lowered) and the overhang seats (excellent example: the Maori Party) which affect the proportionality of the seats.

The Newspapers have seemed to all run editorals on the subject: my "favourite" is from the Hawke's Bay Today by Louis Pierard which attacks the existence of minor parties as the major failing of MMP, a system that, according to Pierard, makes a mockery out of our politics and takes honour and dignity out of the system.

Bah, that's enough for me.

Didn't know it was that bad...

Unknown to me, I'm on ACT's mailing list and I got an e-mail today from them asking for my vote. One bit of the e-mail was interesting..

The average New Zealand worker is now $450 a week poorer than the average Australian worker.

If we were a state of Australia, we'd be the poorest - $100 a week poorer than Tasmania.

If we were a state of the USA, we'd be 51st and last - $120 a week poorer than Mississippi.

I must say, I didn't know it was that bad. If I could be bothered I'd be tempted to check those figures. Seems a bit dodgy. I did do a little looking about Mississippi on wiki though. They were once the fifth richest state in the USA. That's what slave labour can do for you.

Awful Policy

ACT founder and candidate the Hon Sir Roger Douglas said ACT would make the first $10,000 tax-free for full-time income earners, and inflation-index tax brackets to restore 2000 values.

-ACT

(h/t: Deborah @ The Hand Mirror)

How do you justify giving the tax break only to full time workers? Is part time work not important? Not even a little? As Deborah points out this is a spit in the face to anyone that looks after children. This policy completely distorts incentives towards full time work. Sure, that may not seem bad but kinda assumes that everyone can be fitted into a nice little homogeneous box that says that full time work is best for everyone. It's not. I used to kinda like ACT, it appealed to the inner right winger inside me but this policy seems to go against what the likes of Rodney Hide stand for - especially their rhetoric concerning 'choice' - I thought ACT would be the last party that would try to dictate how people can work through the tax system. I am very confused by this policy.

In terms of the other issue raised by this press release - tax bracket creep. I'm in favour of it and I thought it was already in place. A bit of research found that it is - just not to the extent that ACT wants it. It was announced in 2005 and the first adjustment would take place back in the 31st of March 2008 - only covering the period between the 1st of April 2005 and the 31st of March 2008. ACT wants it to cover the period going back to 2000. I'd be seriously more cautious doing that.

I do think that the tax brackets should be increasing by the rate of inflation every year. Not every three years in an attempt to build up a nice little stockpile for election year.

Man... long boring post. One question, did National increase the tax brackets in the 90s? That's something I want to find out.

Money...

No Right Turn talks about social dividends and Universal Basic Incomes here. I've always loved this idea. A pity that no one implements so that we can see if it works in the real world.

As an aside, he also talks about the Qantas Media Awards in another post. (A congratulations to No Right Turn for being nominated) But it's nice that the Otago Daily Times is no longer winning Best Newspaper in the country. Because, quite frankly, it's not. And (for the last five years at least) it was never the Best Newspaper.

Best President Ever

OK, so Josiah Bartlet was fictional. But he was an economist, a fairly left wing economist at that - which makes him pretty rare but not unknown.

He wrote a book called Theory and Practice of Macroeconomics in Developing Countries and that is just cool.

It'll be nice if we had an American presidential candidate who didn't sign up to bad economic policies. Such as McCain and Clinton's support for the Gas Tax holiday. Obama has nothing to do with it but he seems like a lightweight.

Oh well. I liked this video from The Colbert Report. And this from the Dilbert Blog.

Election Prediction (The Wild Guess)

I like making a wild guess, getting it down on paper (or blog) and then getting it out months later and having a good laugh. Without further ado, my predictions for the New Zealand Election this year.

National: 53 seats
Labour: 47 seats
Greens: 8 seats
Maori Party: 5 seats
ACT: 3 seats
NZ First: 3 seats
Progressive: 1 seat
United Future: 1 seat

That makes a total of 121 seats with the Maori Party providing the overhang. This situation will call for some complicated coalition building.

I'm also envisioning a situation where ACT and the Greens get less votes, NZ First is booted out completely (Winston Peters doesn't win back his Tauranga seat), the Maori Party get less party votes and National picks up the majority of these votes. That'll look like:

National: 58 seats
Labour: 49 seats
Greens: 6 seats
Maori Party: 5 seats
ACT: 2 seats
Progressive: 1 seat
United Future: 1 seat

That's 122 seats. Oh well, so much can change before election day.

The Primary Goes On!

I love elections. Today is a hugely important day for the democratic party nominees. It could make or break Hillary Clinton.

These seem to the best place to get results: Indiana (72 delegates) & North Carolina (115 delegates).

Currently Hillary has a 4% lead in Indiana and Obama has a 15% lead in North Carolina. But it's so ridiculously early that those numbers are completely irrelevant. (noon - NZ time)